


to all a good night

by jonphaedrus



Category: Steelheart - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: F/M, Gen, christmas fic three months after christmas, literally just self indulgent nonsense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-11
Updated: 2014-03-11
Packaged: 2018-01-15 09:08:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1299415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the first time in ten years, Jonathan Phaedrus had an Eggnog. He held hands with Tia. He stopped thinking about a classroom full of dead students for a little while, and lived.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to all a good night

**Author's Note:**

> its not christmas any more. this is also stupid. i dont have any excuses for this except that i want prof and tia to kiss and to have a happy family with david and megan as their stupid children. please leave me alone.

It’s been a very long time since Jonathan Phaedrus had believed in Christmas. Ten years, in fact, since the last time he’d woken up and been excited or happy or felt good about the day.

Most years, he woke up on December 25th, thought for a long time about a classroom full of dead children, rolled over, and decided to stay where he was for the day. There was no reason he should celebrate and be happy when they had never gotten a chance to even find out that Santa wasn’t real.

And then, David showed up. And Megan died. Sort of. And they killed Steelheart. And things started to get better again, for the first time in a long time.

And then David decided they were going to have Christmas, and Prof had gone for the option of _shutting himself away in a room and refusing to speak to anyone_ which he knew, logically, was childish, but he didn’t really care if it was childish—he wanted to sulk. He didn’t do Christmas. It just wasn’t a thing he did.

For a week and a half, the city of Newcago had prepped, cleaned, put up decorations, scraped together what they had to have the first real Christmas in ten years. Prof had sulked. He came out to eat, glower, snap at everyone (including Tia, who had given him a look that had told him to quit being intolerable, but he’d ignored her), and then would go back into his room and sulk more.

Christmas morning was about the same as the last ten Christmas mornings had been. He had woken up in his sleeping bag, debated getting up, decided staying in was better, and rolled back over. When he did eventually get up, all the celebration quieted down as he came into the kitchen of their base, took a cup of coffee and a danish, and left again.

He sat, in his room, and ate his danish. He stared at the wall. He eventually decided to go and get lunch (it was underwhelming). He avoided dinner.

A full day of sulking and trying to work and failing was nothing new. He had plenty of practice. Sulking, screwing up, accidentally getting people killed, and lying were some of his best talents—but at a certain point, he heard the laughter of his friends, his little adopted family, and sighed. Sighed, grumbled, and realised he might as well stop pretending not to have any fun.

He didn’t have any gifts except what he came up with—a kiss for Tia, a hug for Abraham and a pat on the back for Cody, a heartfelt thank you to Edmund for all his recent help with rebuilding Newcago, and a hair-ruffle for David, who he was getting more proud of (more worried about) every day.

For the first time in ten years, Jonathan Phaedrus had an eggnog. He held hands with Tia. He stopped thinking about a classroom full of dead students for a little while, and lived.

 


End file.
